Product Box is one of the most useful agile games I have benefited from in recent times. This text shall help you understand what it is and how is it useful. Understanding the Product Box Every commodity that you buy from the market is wrapped in a box/cover. This box is the primary medium for the […]

My friend Stacey is my Food Wife. She has impeccable taste, serious cred, and a remarkable ability to throw a ridiculous cocktail party at a moment's notice. She volunteered to make breakfast the morning we spent in Montauk, and that turned out to be a really, really good idea.She made an incredible batch of slow-scrambled eggs with cheddar and chives. She cooked up some Black Forest bacon from the venerable Schaller & Weber. Best of all? She made some of the most delicious biscuits I have ever had. Light, fluffy, tender. Pretty much perfect.That's why I food-married her.

Matt Swanson wrote an inspiring
blog post
on learning new skills and developing new habits. Below is additional
information that could help you learn a new programming skill or
develop a new programming habit, along with additional resources.
Here's the summary:
Programming is a skill
You need practice as well knowledge
Learning can be seen as a process of bridging your gaps
Performing a new skill requires you to develop new habits, and
the rules for forming habits apply
There are many things you can do to successfully create a new habit
Social support
Environmental support
Programming is a skill
Programming is a skill, which means that learning programming
languages and techniques is not as simple as accumulating facts.
No written guide to programming, no matter how thorough, will ever be
sufficient because there are countless details which have to be left
out, details which you can only assimilate while engaging in the
practice of programming.
No one would suggest that you could become a world-class singer by
merely going through a book on the subject. With these physical
skills, it's obvious that learning involves doing something other than
just absorbing knowledge. I think that, with programming, its nature
as a skill is often overlooked because it's knowledge work. The key
thing to keep in mind is that you must actually do programming in
order to learn languages and techniques.
In Matt's case, he was also trying to develop a new habit - using TDD.
Many aspects of programming are like this. Perhaps you want to start
documenting your code more or you want to start doing daily standup
with your team or whatever. These are all habits, some involving
just you and some involving your team or organization. Recognizing
them as habits will allow you to apply techniques for successfully
developing a new habit.
One habit that you can start developing now is to identify your
learning gaps
(This list, by the way, is pulled in part from
Design for How People Learn):
Knowledge
What information do you need to be successful?
Where kind you find this information?
Skill
What will you need to practice to develop the desired
proficiency?
How can you make opportunities for practice?
Motivation
How do you actually feel about learning the skill?
Do you feel resistant to changing?
More on motivation
Environment
Do you have all the tools you need?
Are they within easy reach? For example - if you want to run
like Matt, are your shoes in your closet or right by your bed so
that you can put them on first thing in the morning?
Programming is comprised of habits
I'm not a great programmer, I'm a pretty good programmer with great
habits
-- Kent Beck
There's a mountain of text out there on how to form habits. Here's my
contribution to that mountain!
Get Social Support
Enlist your coworkers. Go to hackfests. Changing your habits is way,
way easier when you have other people supporting you.
Environmental Support
Change your environment to make your new habit easy to do and
antagonistic habits hard to do. As I mentioned above - put your
running shoes by your bed.
When it comes to programming - change your environment to support your
new habits. When I started learning Clojure, I invested a lot of
effort up front in making it painless to actually run Clojure code
because I knew that otherwise it would be too easy to just tell myself
"meh, I'll get to this later. Now, time to learn angular.js!" or
something like that.
Develop Motivation
I have a little essay on
this topic.
Finally,
"Change Anything"
is probably the best book I've read on developing new habits.
I hope you find this helpful!

Our first order of business in Montauk? Two hours on the beach. Our second? Lobster rolls.After spending some time sunning ourselves on the sand, we piled into our cars and headed west to Amagansett, home of The Lobster Roll, better known locally as Lunch. The paper placemats on our table listed endorsements from celebrities as varied as President Nixon, Barbra Streisand, and Christie Brinkley & Billy Joel (in case you thought this restaurant was new, it's clearly not).We ordered drinks (mine was the Lobster Ale, which was pleasantly satisfying and a bit round in the mouth) and lobster rolls - plus some clams casino. (Thanks, Stacey!)As you can probably guess from its given name, Lunch is known for its lobster rolls, and they were pretty good. Flavorful meat, tasty toasted buns, and a touch (perhaps too heavy a touch) of celery. I liked the mayonnaise to lobster ratio and the not-at-all mayonnaise-y coleslaw, but there was something missing here, some alchemy that I've found in other rolls that just didn't make itself known. Solid, though? For sure.

You probably already know about the following tools, but I found it
useful to be reminded of them:repl
Partitioning
Partitioning is effective as a strategy to combat complexity and scale when two conditions are true: first, the divided parts must be sufficiently small that a person can now solve them; second, it must be possible to reason about how the parts assemble into a whole. Parts that are encapsulated are easier to reason about, because you need to track fewer details when composing the parts into a solution. You can forget, at least temporarily, about the details inside the other parts. This allows the developer to more easily reason about how the parts will interact with each other.
Knowledge
Software developers use knowledge of prior problems to help them solve current ones. This knowledge can be implicit know-how or explicitly written down. It can be specific, as in which components work well with others, or general, as in techniques for optimizing a database table layout. It comes in many forms, including books, lectures, pattern descriptions, source code, design documents, or sketches on a whiteboard.
Abstraction
Abstraction can effectively combat complexity and scale because it shrinks problems, and smaller problems are easier to reason about. If you are driving from New York to Los Angeles, you can simplify the navigation problem by considering only highways. By hiding details (excluding the option of driving across fields or parking lots), you have shrunken the number of options to consider, making the problem easier to reason about.
From Just Enough Software Architecture: A Risk-Driven Approach by George H. Fairbanks

Happy Saturday, kids! I've had something of an unusual week, what with my whirlwind trip to Montauk and a very busy couple of days at work. I'm ready to enjoy the weekend, and have already been for a run and visited the Greenmarket. Before I head back out to sun myself and read in Central Park (wearing SPF 30, minimum, of course), let's take a look at this week's Treasury!First up, the gorgeous, almost unbearably cool Brooklyn abode that's home to Solange Knowles and her family. It seems like a seriously fun place to be - not to mention effortlessly stylish and comfortable. I wouldn't mind an invite, is all I'm saying.Next, some exciting news courtesy of SF Girl By Bay, who attended a launch party for the new collaboration between The Curiosity Shoppe and The Shops at Target. Everything looks great, but I'm particularly excited about this continental US-shaped serving board. It will most definitely be making an appearance chez Queenie come October 20, when the line becomes available.Last, but certainly not least, these incredible photographs by artist Alberto Seveso, created by injecting water with two different inks. Don't they make you think of billowing, delicate silk? I cannot get enough of these.

A couple of weeks ago, my friends Matt and Marcia invited me and our friend Stacey to join them in Montauk for a couple of days. They'd rented a house for the week to celebrate their seventh wedding anniversary, and wanted to have friends out to join them in the revelry.Obviously, I said yes.Montauk is a tiny little village out on the eastern tip of Long Island's South Fork - in fact, it's so far east that it's the easternmost point in the state of New York. It's long been considered the chillest part of the Hamptons, thanks to its history as a surfing and artist-friendly enclave. (Rufus Wainwright married his longtime partner at their home there just yesterday.)Town laws forbid chains of any kind, so all of the hotels are tiny and charming, and Starbucks is nowhere to be seen. Hipsters have invaded in recent years, but I have to say: they weren't too annoying.Several hours of both days were devoted to serious beach time. The waves were strong (both Marcia and Matt took serious bangs when coming in from paddle boarding), and the sand was soft.And though I didn't snag a photo, I can tell you that the stargazing was likewise amazing from the beach. Matt, Stacey and I trekked down there one night (powered by a not inconsiderable amount of wine and bourbon) and laid back on the sand. It's rare for a New Yorker to see more than a couple of stars at once; to see clouds and bands of them - and to understand why we call it the Milky Way - is a rare treat, and one to be savored.And we ate a lot, too. More on that soon.

One of my very favorite things to order at Uchiko in Austin are the shishito peppers. They arrive piping hot from the pan, blistered and sprinkled with crunch salt, and I can't help but burn my greedy little fingertips eating them. Shishitos are a relatively mild pepper - with a spicy lurker here and there - and so you can eat the little guys in one bite, seeds and all.When I saw shishito peppers for sale at the Union Square Greenmarket on Friday, I sprung at the chance to try my hand at blistering them at home. How hard could it be?Turns out, not hard at all. I highly recommend you try it as soon as possible. Like me, you can eat them up on your own. Or, if you're in a sharing mood, make them (and a batch of gin gimlets) for a crowd.Blistered Shishito Peppers1/2 pound whole shishito peppers, washed and completely dried1 tsp. canola oilSea saltHeat a large, heavy-bottomed skillet over high heat until screaming hot. (A drop of water should dance across the surface.) Meanwhile, in a medium bowl, toss the peppers with the oil until evenly coated. Once the pan is hot, add the peppers and cook until well blistered all over, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon.Remove the peppers to a plate, sprinkle generously with salt, and serve immediately.Serves two as a snack or appetizer.

A gorgeous sky in Chappaqua last weekend. We've been having ridiculously nice weather in New York of late, especially given that August is supposed to be the most miserable month of all around these parts.

A couple of weeks back, a small team (which organizes some social responsibility activities) from our company visited Asmita Center for Handicapped. I along with my wife also joined the group. Asmita is a NGO based in Mumbai. It runs many projects, amongst which, runs a small vocational training center for physically challenged people in Ashokvan, Borivali (West), Mumbai. Their motto ‘Hum bhi kisi se kam nahi’ is not just on paper, but we could see that motto being carved out into the hearts of many students undergoing various kind of trainings at the institute. The center mainly targets handicapped people who are confined to their homes due to their disablilties and lack of self confidence. Asmita volunteers go to the society (which targets mainly slums) looking for such students and persuading their parents to send them to the center. Recently they have started involving college social project teams to reach out to physically challenged people in the society. Each batch consists of about 15-20 students who are trained for about 2 years. The main aim is to build self confidence within these students so that they have the confidence to face the society and the required skills to earn a livelihood for themselves. Up till now the trust has helped more than 1000 handicapped people (called as 'AmrutPutra' and 'AmrutKanya' ) in the center.The activities in the center include sewing, wood/board panel cutting and painting, making greeting cards, making paper plates, stitching (bags, aprons, mats, etc), agarbattis, other handicrafts used by KG schools, teaching computer basics, etc. At the end of their training period, the students are provided with machinery and equipment to enable them to earn a sustainable living.Sudha Tai Wagh has been running this center for almost 2 decades on a voluntary basis. Hats off to her dedication! We have certainly a lot to learn from such kind of people. When we were talking to her regarding various aspects/challenges about training the handicapped people, I remembered this ultimate quote by Mark Twain - "Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see". The proof was right in front of us! :-) The rest of the volunteers consist of teachers (most of whom are students who have passed out in earlier batches), retired people, some young students, helpers and a bus driver. The bus, donated to the trust, picks up the students from their homes to the center and drops them back at their homes. The center also employs a physio to provide medical help to the students. On our visit, we met with the students, the trainers, the founder member and other volunteers who had decided to spend at least a part of their time supporting the cause – each had a special experience to share and the visit turned out to be a beautiful interaction for all of us there. We watched videos of the Asmita’s performing team – it’s a team of specially gifted artists who can play musical instruments with their feet, dance on a single leg, sing and entertain like never before! The talent and more importantly the enthusiasm exuberated in these performances is hard to express in words.They show cased their products and one would never believe that these students could have made them! Some of us tried our hand at rolling the agarbatti – and none could do it as perfectly as Amol - Amol could not bend his arms like most of us can, and crawls on his knees.Each one of us carried back a lot with us - Asmita's people, its humility, its simplicity, its dedication and much more! They definitely need a financial support, but more than that they need volunteers (part time/ full time) to help in their cause. We can definitely try to make a small difference in the lives of physically challenged people! I am wrong saying this ... It is actually going to change our lives for sure! Let's make them friends forever ...I would end this post with a very nice quote by Janet Barnes -"I have not been handicapped by my condition. I am physically challenged and differently able."

Some of the most delicious things are born of necessity. My corn, avocado and cucumber salad most definitely falls into that category. I first made it one hot, sweaty night when I couldn't face cooking but was too hungry to wait for delivery. The only vegetables in the fridge were corn and cucumber, and one lone avocado hung out in a bowl on the counter.Figuring that nothing tastes bad if you add enough basil, I husked the corn and sliced the kernels off into a shallow bowl, chopped and added the cucumber, and pulled a few leaves from my windowsill basil. Finally, I split the avocado and added half of it to the mix. A healthy amount of salt, dash of pepper, and light pours of sherry vinegar and olive oil followed. (My feelings about sherry vinegar are akin to those I have for basil: it makes pretty much everything better.)The resulting salad was far tastier than I expected. The avocado melted just a bit under the salt and vinegar, becoming part creamy dressing, part vegetable. The raw corn popped with every bite, and the cucumbers added satisfying heft. (Cucumbers, heft - who knew!) And, of course, the basil was delightful. Nothing says summer like a shower of basil. (And if you need more punch, just add a scallion to the mix.)Corn, Avocado & Cucumber Salad1 kirby cucumber, cut into 1/2-inch chunksKernels from 1 ear of sweet corn1/2 an avocado, cut into 1/2 inch chunks5-6 basil leaves, thinly slicedSea salt and freshly ground black pepperOlive oil and sherry vinegarCombine the cucumber, corn, avocado and basil in a medium bowl. Season with a generous pinch of salt and a few grinds of pepper, then dress with a drizzle each of oil and vinegar. Toss until well combined and let sit for 10 minutes or so. Taste for seasoning, adjust to your liking, and serve immediately.Serves one as a main dish or two as a side.

Happy Sunday, my doves! It's a gorgeous morning here in New York, and I'm headed out to Brooklyn for some quality time in the sun with a very dear friend. Before I go, though, let's take a look at the goodies in this week's treasury, shall we?First up, the truly lovely, tiny apartment inhabited - until recently - by Katie Armour, one of the two founders of Matchbook Magazine. Katie's 500 square foot space oozes with personality and is filled with treasures. It's a little jewel box of a home. Shortly after her place was photographed for the August issue of Matchbook, Katie moved from San Francisco to New York. I'm sure her new digs (in my neighborhood, no less) will be every bit as lovely.Next, I have a birthday coming up, and I have my greedy little eyes on this ring from Bauble Bar. I love a monogram, and I love a signet ring, and I simply love this. Trying to decide which finger it should live on. Ring or pinky?Finally, a ridiculously large house on the Bowery, made possible by a genius real estate buy back when property in the neighborhood could be had for a song. The 72-room building is now a single family home for an artist and his family. Crazy, right?

Each summer, sometime in July, I remember: I have an ice cream maker. (A cheap one that has lasted five summers so far.) It's not that I truly forget about my ice cream maker; after all, its canister stares me in the eye every time I open my freezer. But I seem to forget about the glories it can bestow upon me. Then it gets hot and nasty and my cravings increase, and I remember: it's time to make the ice cream.This year, I bought my first-ever ice cream cookbook, the incredible Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home by Jeni Britton Bauer. After just one outing, it is now my official ice cream bible. Why? Well, Jeni doesn't have you fuss around with eggs and custard. Instead, she explains the science behind her American ice cream base, including the reasons for using a little corn syrup, and the genius addition of softened cream cheese to help emulsify the mixture. And her recipes are organized by season, emphasizing fresh, local ingredients. But not in an obnoxious way, I promise.And, let me tell you: it works. This is wonderful, creamy, balanced, stress-free ice cream. I tried my hand at her recipe for sweet basil with honeyed pine nuts, and it was magnificent. The pine nut praline was a snap to make (my one alteration: use parchment paper to line your baking sheet), and the crunchy, sweet bits of nut added interest and earthiness to the sweet and spicy basil-flavored ice cream.I think my next attempt will be her beet, mascarpone and poppy seed ice cream. Oh, yes. (And, if you're not game to make the stuff at home, you can always order Jeni's ice cream, made with love in Columbus, Ohio, from her website.)

The food blogosphere has been abuzz of late about the opening of a New York outpost of Maison Kayser on the Upper East Side. Founded by French baker and pastry chef Eric Kayser, the bakery and patisserie has shops all over the world, and is now taking the Big Apple by storm. Obviously, I had to stop by as soon as possible to see what all the fuss was about.The goods (I sampled a few different kinds of brioche, a bit of raisin bread, and a bite of baguette) were uniformly delicious. The plié au chocolat I ended up spiriting away to Central Park was delightful - its custardy innards cut through with dark chocolate, its pastry hardy but flaky. That said.I tried to grab lunch in the café, and it was a nightmare. Since it was their first weekend open, and since the Upper East Side tends to descend upon any decent restaurant like a horde of hungry teenagers, I knew it would be crazy. I was ready for crazy.But I wasn't ready to be ignored while the host chatted with the people on either side of me, or to be brushed off when I asked if I could put my name on the list to be seated. (Given the whole being ignored thing, I wasn't going to trust someone about my place in line unless it was written down.) While the storefront crew were incredibly helpful and pleasant (especially given that I saw several customers cut the line and generally act like jerks), I am still pretty peeved about my experience with the cafe staff.I'll likely give them one more go, on a weekday this time, but that's about it. Hopefully it will be a different host, and the Real Houswives rejects around me won't be as exciting for him.

Today is Julia Child's 100th birthday. It's safe to say that if you live in the United States and eat food, you owe a debt to Ms. Child. She was one of the driving forces behind the home cooking revolution that swept through our kitchens in the 1960s (and continues to this day), and her influence is everywhere.Tonight, as I make gougères to take with me to a friend's house on Friday, I'll think of Julia. As I eat my heirloom tomato salad (recipe here), I'll think of Julia. And as I pick up her wonderful memoir My Life in France for yet another read, I'll think of Julia. And, apparently, every time I use Google today, I'll think of Julia.Even setting aside the mammoth accomplishment of her Mastering the Art books and her status as the biggest TV food star of all time, Julia Child was a seriously fascinating lady. She worked for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, helping build the organization that would later become the CIA. She lived all over the world, and her relationship with her husband Paul was an inspiring partnership - not to mention the inspiration for some seriously adorable Valentines. Even if you don't have Julia's boeuf bourgignon on the menu tonight, I hope you'll take a moment to remember her in your own way. And if you don't take a few minutes to watch PBS' amazing remix of her shiniest TV moments, you're a fool. Bon appétit!

I am doing a lot of Javascript coding lately, so my reading is mostly about that. I read other articles too, but that is a small minority. Let me show show you the articles, posts that I came upon this week.

Another one day bike trek organized by Abhijeet ! This time he planned a trek to Dhak and we joined him to explore the nature trails. Dhak is considered to be one of the most thrilling and challenging treks in Karjat region. We were also very excited for this adventure. It was around 290 Km return journey. (Thane - Lonavala - Kamshet - Kundeshwar and back). We wanted to reach to the narrow ridge between the 'Kalakrai' cliff and the mountain, from where one can climb up to the Bahiri caves. However, we faced very heavy rains and dense fog. We got completely lost .... Since we wanted to come back on same day, we finally decided to return back. It was really difficult to trace the return path in such a dense fog ... but finally we managed it :-) Though we could not complete our trek, we enjoyed the waterfalls, Kundali river, the dense forest as well as fog and the rain bullets ! And needless to say we enjoyed being lost in Nature ! ... Sharing few snaps ...

Adding the SSH keys on your github site is the simple solution.
I am using 3 github sites;
- 1 external
- 2 behind the firewall
Each have their different email address for security reasons.
So, quite often, I get this error - if I mess up things. I was looking for a solution so that you can create a public rsa file for each github site.
The solution was to create config inside ~/.ssh directory.
The file:
Host
User git
Port 22
Hostname github-site1.com
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/github_site1_id_rsa
TCPKeepAlive yes
IdentitiesOnly yes
Hostname github-site2.com
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/github_site2_id_rsa
Hostname github-site3.com
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/github_site3_id_rsa
Bingo !!
I am sure there are other better ways to solve this problem.
I would appreciate comments.

In the past, many times I have come around a situation where I want to load a completely different set of facets in the Pivot Viewer without really instantiating a new instance of it! While in the Pivot Viewer’s first version it was relatively simpler (by just loading a different cxml) but in the second […]